Doctors told her the only solution was
to eat 5,000 calories a day – more than double the recommended daily
amount for women and far more than she ever used to eat – because her
body can ingest only a fraction of the nutrients she takes in.

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Her daily menu includes half a block
of cheese, a packet of smoked salmon, a packet of biscuits, nuts, fruit,
cake, a curry or shepherd’s pie for dinner and bags of sweets.

Miss Dunbar, 51, of Leeds, West
Yorkshire, said: ‘It’s a full-time job. Our food bill is phenomenal. It
must cost about £200 to feed me a week.

‘It was enjoyable at first but now it’s a pain and I hate it. Even if I don’t feel like it I still really need to eat.’

Ms Dunbar, 51, decided to have weight loss surgery after her weight crept up to 20st 7lb

Malnourished: Ms Dunbar's weight plummeted to 6st after surgery and she had to be fed through a tube

In 2010, Miss Dunbar paid £10,000 to
have the biliopancreatic diversion with a duodenal switch operation at
the private Spire Hospital in Leeds. In this type of weight-loss surgery
a large part of the stomach is removed and the small intestine
re-routed.

The object is to reduce the amount of time the body has to capture calories and absorb fat.

Following the operation, her weight dropped so quickly that her sister Karen, 50, was inspired to have the same procedure.

But while the sister’s weight levelled
off at 10st, Miss Dunbar’s continued to drop at an alarming rate.

She
said: ‘It was an absolutely awful time. In the pub, people looked at me
and thought, “She is not going to make it”.

Then and now: She says she now eats far more than when she was overweight

‘My face was like a skeleton and it was totally sunken in. There wasn’t an ounce of flesh on me.’

She was so malnourished she developed Wernicke Encephalopathy,
normally seen in alcoholics, people with HIV or those who have been
starved, leaving her with memory loss and balance problems.

HER DAILY 5,000 CALORIE DIET

BREAKFAST:

Three cups of coffee with milk

Two egg omelette with 175g of cheese (around about half a block)

Two yoghurts

Bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes

DINNER:

Thai curry with rice, roast dinner, shepherd's pie

SNACKS THROUGHOUT THE DAY:

A whole packet of parma ham or smoked salmon

Chicken liver parfait on toast

Cheese and biscuits

100g of cashew nuts

Biscuits and chocolate

Lots of fruit

Water, milk and Lucozade

Bags of sweets, especially jelly beans and fruit pastels

A huge piece of cake in the middle of the night

Miss Dunbar added: ‘Looking at
pictures of myself is like looking at a picture of an African child that
is starving. I’m just bones.

‘I went into hospital to lose weight and I came out as a different person.’

Miss Dunbar underwent two more
operations last year to increase her stomach size to aid the intake of
nutrients, but nothing else can be done to maintain a healthy weight
apart from eating.

She is now a healthy eight stone but has to continue to eat as much as she can to ensure she continues to gain weight.

'To combat the illness, I need to absorb as much as I can from food,' she said.

'For example, whereas a normal person would consume about 30-40g of protein a day, I need to take 125g in to get my levels up to where they should be.

'It has completely changed me as a person.

'At the beginning I was really happy, because I was dropping lots of weight.

'But then it's supposed to stop and it just didn't.

'There was no light at the end of the tunnel - it was an absolutely awful time.

Now, thanks to her huge calorie intake, she has managed to prevent her condition from worsening.